In a dimly lit room at McConnell air force base in south central Kansas, analysts from a national guard intelligence reconnaissance surveillance group watch live drone surveillance video coming from war zones in the Middle East.

During combat, the analysts become part of a kill chain analyzing live drone video, then communicating what they see in instant-message chat with jet fighter pilots, operators of armed Predator and Reaper drones, and ground troops.

They carry out drone warfare while sitting thousands of miles from battlefields. They dont fly the drones and dont fire the missiles. They video-stalk enemy combatants, and tell warfighters what they see. The work, they say, helps kill terrorists, including from Isis.

The group does this work in the middle of America, at an air base surrounded by flat cow pastures and soybean fields. The 184th Intelligence Wing of the Kansas air national guard, started this work about 2002. Until last year, most people in Kansas knew nothing about their role in drone warfare.

The work is top secret.They say that they see things in those drone images that no one wants to see. Sometimes, its terrorists beheading civilians. Sometimes its civilians dying accidentally in missions that the Kansans help coordinate.

They agonize over those deaths. The most frequently heard phrase in drone combat, one airman says, is: Dont push the button.

You see [enemy combatants] kiss their kids goodbye, and kiss their wives goodbye, and then they walk down the street, said a squadron chief master sergeant. As soon as they get over that hill, the missile is released.

The Americans wait to fire, he says, because we dont want the family to see it.

Reporters for the New York Times Magazine, in a November story called The Uncounted, wrote that they had spent 18 months personally visiting 150 coalition strike sites in Iraq. They concluded that one in five strikes kills civilians a toll they say is 31 times higher than military estimates.

What the Kansas airmen describe is another story. The way they see it, they save civilians and soldiers. They fight terrorists who want to come here.

Enemy deaths dont bother them. The terrorists involved, they all made choices, an officer who identifies himself as Maj Jeffrey says. We protect the guys and gals on the ground.

But civilian deaths weigh on them. It sounds callous to say that its collateral damage, says Col David Weishaar, the 184ths commander. Its human life. Were doing what we can to mitigate it.

Three of Weishaars airmen, on a recent Friday, file into a bare, concrete air base conference room and gather around a small round table. They state ranks and first names: Chief Master Sgt Don, Maj Jeffrey, Staff Sgt James.

(The airmen dont want their full names published for fear of retribution against their families.)

They spend the next hour describing drone warfare.

The technology we use is just insane, its so good, Jeffrey begins. Drone commanders in the Middle East can place an eye in the sky to watch enemy combatants for months, if necessary, Jeffrey says.

They park drones in the air above surveillance targets and program them to loiter. Many drones can loiter 14 hours fully armed. The operators replace them with a refueled drone when the previous drone runs low.

A leading analyst of drone warfare is Micah Zenko, an author and former analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations. He numbers dozens of military officers among his sources, and has written about drone successes. He has written that drone warfare has crippled the ability of al-Qaida and other groups to carry out international terrorism.

Not only that, but according to him, drone strikes raise other questions: they turn populations against America. Most combatants killed are low level.

Strategically, Zenko said in an interview, US leaders are not asking themselves crucial questions:

How do you tie in those tactical operations with the broader campaign in the Middle East?

The military says were using drones to accomplish either force protection of our troops on the ground, or to conduct counter-terrorism, he said. But in Afghanistan, most of our drone strikes protect Afghan forces on the ground. In Somalia, we are killing people who are a threat to Somali forces.

Why is the CIA and JSOC [the USmilitarys Joint Special Operations Command] functioning as the air force of the Somali government? Zenko asked. Thats not really counter-terrorism.

Zenko says the US should end so-called signature strikes, (the type of strike often coordinated by the Kansas video analysts). Those strikes target unidentified militants based on their behavior patterns and personal networks. Zenko argues that the military should limit targeted killings to a limited number of specific terrorists with transnational ambitions.

Besides Zenko, some thinkers around the world say its not just casualties we need to worry about. As drone warfare technology proliferates, physicist Stephen Hawking and inventor Elon Musk said this month that were heading into the dangers of robotic warfare, and an artificial intelligence arms race.